The legacy physical distribution and publishing industries are doing worse but are creators and artists doing worse? Is there even a problem to fix?

Maybe, I can't shake the feeling that publicity is good but sometime, sooner or later, someone actually has to pay for something.

The two systems that have worked historically is directly paying for content or advertising. Ad supported stuff on the web, other than Google, doesn't have a great history.

Youtube is free publicity for artists just like radio is for music. Often I watch movie trailers, game trailers and gameplay videos and then go to the cinema or buy new games on steam as a result.

To an extent I think that's true. However, I watch a lot of BBC documentaries on YouTube. I know I'm not paying the licence fee which funds this stuff. In effect I am free-riding on the people who are paying for this stuff. If there was a way I could pay and get iPlayer easily that would be even better!

That is the 'red faced crying shame' of digital content distribution. People like me actually want to pay.